Journey of Bengaluru couple who eat adventurously in a new book

A new book documents the intrepid journey of a Bengaluru couple that travels to eat weird, uneaten creatures

Food menus at restaurants can be as interesting a thing to read as a mystery novel. There is an array of clues for you - in terms of ingredients, preparation and cuisine - to help you deduce what your dish will taste like. But for an intrepid epicurean and self-proclaimed nerd like Vivek Singh, who is the subject of a new book written by his wife Divya Anand, menus are a lesson in biology. "When I look at menus, what instinctively comes to my mind is where that food is placed on the 'animal kingdom' chart," he says in a telephonic interview from Bengaluru.

Anand, a vegetarian, knew of her husband's crazy obsession with food, when they began seeing each other. "One day, he sent me an email with no subject line and just an image attached," she writes in her book. The image was the same animal chart, he now tells us about. "On one side there were invertebrates classified into molluscs, crustaceans...on the other side, the vertebrates were broken into Pisces and mammals." That was Singh's progress report. "It's what I have eaten so far," he had told her. Anand knew right then that her kitchen was going to be a science lab of sorts, and that no travel plans together would be complete without scouring for strange animals to eat.

Singh eating fugu (pufferfish) at Guenpin Fugu, Singapore

Dare Eat That: A Guide to Bizarre Foods from Around The World (Penguin Random House) is a result of this journey that the couple undertook to eat adventurously. Spanning nine countries and five years, Anand shows us what her daredevil husband puts himself through, as he binges on ant eggs, snakes, locusts, scorpion, frogs, crocodiles and the deadliest of them all: the 'poisonous' pufferfish.

"Everybody gets a kick from some or the other kind of adventure. For some it would be extreme sports or exploring a new place. Eating previously 'uneaten' food is my equivalent to that," says Singh, an engineer, who currently heads a few start-ups. "I was raised in Gorakhpur [Haryana], where being non-vegetarian meant eating fish and chicken. Meats beyond that were out of bounds. When I started eating other foods [after leaving home], it helped break that mental barrier. I realised that what I considered non-edible, could have very well been the staple diet of another culture. I wanted to see what all I could find and eat."

Vivek Singh and author Divya Anand. Pic/Archish Mathe Madhavan

Anand, a project manager in the e-market space, admits that she and her husband are polar opposites. "When I met him, I wasn't a foodie at all. Vivek, on the other hand, loves food so much, that he will savour every bite of an ordinary home-cooked meal," she says. What helped was that despite being a vegetarian, she was never queasy about her husband's dietary habits. "The day it became real for me was when he brought home a balut [a fertilised duck embryo that is incubated for 14-21 days, before it is boiled and eaten from the shell] from a market in Seattle and cooked it," she says. Anand recalls this experience in the book, too: "I could see the veins popping out of the top of the head [of the bird], as he ate it."

Though Singh is a fearless eater, he admits he has his limits. "I have been pushing myself for a very long time now, and my mind has been expanding. What foods I would have said no to four years back, I have eaten since. But there are some that I still haven't had the courage to try out," he says. "For instance, I have had the opportunity to try out dishes made with coagulated blood, but I am yet to bring myself to eat it. The same goes with lizards, despite having visited a farm in Vietnam, where they were reared. So, I am still evolving." Anand adds, "I think the more we travel, the more we understand newer cultures and why people eat these foods, the easier it becomes to warm up to new experiences."

Next on the couple's itinerary is travelling the length and breadth of India to look for peculiar eats, especially after Singh tried out "ant chutney" on a recent trip to a coffee estate in Sakleshpur, Karnataka. "All my food experiences have been part serendipity, and most importantly, about keeping an open mind. It's a work in progress," he says.

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